Soham set to remember Holly and Jessica as anniversary of murders approaches | The Independent Soham set to remember Holly and Jessica as anniversary of murders approaches Tuesday 14 August 2012 06:19 BST Click to follow The Independent Online The parents of murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman and their home town of Soham are preparing to remember the moment they discovered the schoolgirls were dead. Friday marks the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the 10-year-olds' burnt bodies near an air base at Mildenhall in Suffolk. The grisly discovery ended a two-week hunt to find the girls after they disappeared from a family barbecue in Soham, Cambridgeshire. Ian Huntley, a caretaker at Soham Village College, is serving two life terms for their murder. His girlfriend, Maxine Carr, a teaching assistant at their school, served 21 months for perverting the course of justice and is now living under a new identity. Speaking as the anniversary approaches, a criminologist warned that the pain of the killings is likely to “last a lifetime”.

Colleen Moore, principal lecturer in criminology at Anglia Ruskin University, said: “Because of the extreme nature of the crime and because of our fascination with Huntley, it is unlikely that his crime will be forgotten in our lifetime. “For the wider community there will be a residual sense of grief. “Even those who did not know the girls or their families will have identified with what they were going through and will have some sense of fear that it could happen again.” While townsfolk are determined to remember Holly and Jessica, acts of remembrance in Soham are expected to be low-profile. On August 17 2002, residents flocked to St Andrew's church to await confirmation that the search was over. The Rev Tim Alban Jones oversaw a special service that night but said there would be no similar service this year. He added: “It was decided that the church would not be doing anything to mark the 10th anniversary. “It is very much a time for the families.” Sharon and Les Chapman, parents of Jessica Chapman, have rarely spoken publicly in recent years. But they recently broke their silence to hail the first anniversary of the Police National Database - introduced to close gaps in information-sharing between police forces.

The database was the key recommendation from the Bichard Inquiry into failings by police during the Soham murder inquiry after Huntley had faced a series of allegations for rape and under-age sex. The number of searches carried out by police forces using the database is expected to hit one million in time for the anniversary. In a statement, Mr and Mrs Chapman said: “We hope [the database's] use will mean other families don't suffer the same loss and heartbreak as we did.” Holly's brother, Oliver Wells, also recently spoke publicly for the first time about the killings. Now aged 22, he told the Radio Times that he thought about his sister frequently. “I wish I could see her now, see what she'd have looked like,” he said. “We do chat about her quite regularly, which I think is a very nice thing. It's strange being three of us, when there used to be a fourth.” Her father, Kevin Wells, told an ITV documentary that the stress felt by him and his wife Nicola following their loss almost led to the break-up of their marriage. But he added: “She was lost in a kind of wilderness whereas I was more hard-line about my emotions.

“For the first five months after Holly died we broke down together, but after that we processed our grief at different speeds. “It was one, almost two years before we found each other again, but grief gives you a different sense of the passage of time and it slipped by unnoticed.” He added that the passage of time had not healed the pain but vowed to “make it out the other side”. Mr Wells ran this year's London Marathon in memory of the girls. He raised nearly £8,000 for the Grief Encounter Project which helped support his family and of which he is now the patron. He completed the 26-mile course in five hours, four minutes and 58 seconds. On his JustGiving website, he wrote that the charity had been vital in helping with “the uninvited grieving process can have on your life and your future”.

PA Ten years on, parents of murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman prepare for memorial | London Evening Standard Ten years on, parents of murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman prepare for memorial Tuesday 14 August 2012 06:38 BST Click to follow The Evening Standard Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman The parents of murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman and their home town of Soham are preparing to remember the moment they discovered the schoolgirls were dead. Friday marks the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the 10-year-olds' burnt bodies near an air base at Mildenhall in Suffolk. The grisly discovery ended a two-week hunt to find the girls after they disappeared from a family barbecue in Soham, Cambridgeshire. Ian Huntley, a caretaker at Soham Village College, is serving two life terms for their murder. His girlfriend, Maxine Carr, a teaching assistant at their school, served 21 months for perverting the course of justice and is now living under a new identity. Speaking as the anniversary approaches, a criminologist warned that the pain of the killings is likely to "last a lifetime".

Colleen Moore, principal lecturer in criminology at Anglia Ruskin University, said: "Because of the extreme nature of the crime and because of our fascination with Huntley, it is unlikely that his crime will be forgotten in our lifetime. "For the wider community there will be a residual sense of grief. "Even those who did not know the girls or their families will have identified with what they were going through and will have some sense of fear that it could happen again." While townsfolk are determined to remember Holly and Jessica, acts of remembrance in Soham are expected to be low-profile. On August 17 2002, residents flocked to St Andrew's church to await confirmation that the search was over. The Rev Tim Alban Jones oversaw a special service that night but said there would be no similar service this year. He added: "It was decided that the church would not be doing anything to mark the 10th anniversary. "It is very much a time for the families." Sharon and Les Chapman, parents of Jessica Chapman, have rarely spoken publicly in recent years. But they recently broke their silence to hail the first anniversary of the Police National Database - introduced to close gaps in information-sharing between police forces.

The database was the key recommendation from the Bichard Inquiry into failings by police during the Soham murder inquiry after Huntley had faced a series of allegations for rape and under-age sex. The number of searches carried out by police forces using the database is expected to hit one million in time for the anniversary. In a statement, Mr and Mrs Chapman said: "We hope [the database's] use will mean other families don't suffer the same loss and heartbreak as we did." Holly's brother, Oliver Wells, also recently spoke publicly for the first time about the killings. Now aged 22, he told the Radio Times that he thought about his sister frequently. "I wish I could see her now, see what she'd have looked like," he said. "We do chat about her quite regularly, which I think is a very nice thing. It's strange being three of us, when there used to be a fourth." Her father, Kevin Wells, told an ITV documentary that the stress felt by him and his wife Nicola following their loss almost led to the break-up of their marriage. But he added: "She was lost in a kind of wilderness whereas I was more hard-line about my emotions.

"For the first five months after Holly died we broke down together, but after that we processed our grief at different speeds. "It was one, almost two years before we found each other again, but grief gives you a different sense of the passage of time and it slipped by unnoticed." He added that the passage of time had not healed the pain but vowed to "make it out the other side". Mr Wells ran this year's London Marathon in memory of the girls. He raised nearly £8,000 for the Grief Encounter Project which helped support his family and of which he is now the patron. He completed the 26-mile course in five hours, four minutes and 58 seconds. On his JustGiving website, he wrote that the charity had been vital in helping with "the uninvited grieving process can have on your life and your future". More about: Close We have noticed that you are using an ad blocker. Free access to Standard.co.uk’s comprehensive package of news, sport and entertainment relies on advertising revenue. This allows us to invest in the best writers, pictures and videos. To continue viewing the site please disable your ad blocker for Standard.co.uk. Need help to do this? Thank you for your support.

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Thank you for supporting standard.co.uk Continue to our site Two bodies found as police arrest couple - Telegraph Two bodies found as police arrest couple By Olga Craig and Rajeev Syal 12:01AM BST 18 Aug 2002 Police searching for Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were last night examining two bodies found in woodland near an air force base seven miles from the missing 10-year-olds' home town. The bodies were discovered by walkers at 12.15pm beside a dirt track on Forestry Commission land in an area called Thetford Forest Park, close to the perimeter of the Lakenheath United States air base near Mildenhall, Suffolk. Police cordoned off an area a mile square around the site. They refused to comment on the age or sex of the bodies, and said it could be some time before any identities would be released. Forensic science teams and detectives from Suffolk and Cambridgeshire were at the scene. The grim development appeared, however, to extinguish any lingering hopes that the schoolgirls, from Soham, Cambridgeshire, might be found alive.

It came only hours after officers had arrested a 28-year-old caretaker and his 25-year-old girlfriend in connection with the girls' murder. Related Articles Anger, despair and sorrow 18 Aug 2002 Their arrest, at 4am, followed the discovery by police of "items of major interest" in Soham Village College, near where the girls vanished a fortnight ago , and where the arrested man, Ian Huntley, is the caretaker. He and his girlfriend, Maxine Carr - a former teaching assistant at the missing girls' school - were being questioned last night at separate police stations about the fate of Holly and Jessica, whose disappearance prompted Britain's biggest manhunt. A police press statement said Mr Huntley had been arrested over the murder and abduction of the girls and that Miss Carr had been arrested over the murders. For Kevin and Nicola Wells, Holly's parents, and Leslie and Sharon Chapman, the parents of her best friend Jessica, the discovery of the bodies came at the end of a day that had - in the words of a local church minister - "plunged them into the abyss of darkness". For two weeks, the parents had held on to the belief that their daughters would be found alive .

They were informed at 7.45am yesterday about the arrests and that the inquiry had become a murder case. Just after 1pm came the final crushing news that two bodies had been found near Mildenhall. Holly's father telephoned relatives, saying: "That's it - it's all over." The arrested couple live in a tied cottage beside Soham Village College. They had voluntarily given witness statements to the police on Friday, and were arrested at Mr Huntley's father's home in Littleport, 15 miles from Soham. That house was later cordoned off and searched. A spokesman for the Huntley family declined to comment. The father, Kevin Huntley, used to rent a cottage a few hundred yards from the scene where the bodies were discovered yesterday, according to a former employer. Ron Cowper, the landlord of the Brewer's Tap pub, Lakenheath, said Mr Huntley worked for him as a barman in 1999. "Kevin was a nice quiet man, popular with customers but quite nervous," he said.

"His son Ian came in for a drink a couple of times." Ian Huntley, originally from Grimsby, had applied for the Soham college job and been vetted under the name Ian Nixon. Miss Carr, also from Grimsby, had changed her surname from Capp. Mr Huntley was, allegedly, the last person to speak to the girls. The week before, he had described them as "happy as Larry " on the day they vanished, saying they had walked past his home and had asked after Miss Carr as he was washing his dog at his front door. During several interviews he sobbed as he spoke of his regret that he had not asked them where they were going. Miss Carr also spoke to the media many times of her distress over the missing girls - showing a home-made card that Holly had given her at the end of term, inscribed with the words: "C U in the future, Miss Carr. Don't leave us. Don't go far." Last week Miss Carr wept and said she would "treasure the card for ever". Yesterday's discovery of the bodies caused anguish in Soham.

Lesley Prine, 38, who runs a pet store, said: "It's going to have to be a miracle not to be them." Last night, grief-stricken residents placed flowers and pictures of the girls by the porch of St Andrew's parish church. The bodies were found concealed in a dense grove of trees at the end of a white sand track that runs off Wangford New Road. The steeple of Wangford Church, 500 yards away, is the only building in sight. Thetford Forest Park has twice before featured in police investigations after the bodies of murdered children were found dumped there. Soon after the news of yesterday's discovery broke, a well-wisher arrived to place a bouquet at the roadside. Jhangir Soltani, who lives nearby, said he was a father of two children and wanted to pay his respects. He said: "You have to watch your children all the time - they're not safe." The news shocked residents of Mildenhall and Lakenheath, prosperous little market towns.

Marjorie Frape, a retired teacher in Mildenhall, said: "All our sympathies must be with the families of Holly and Jessica but also for the whole town of Soham. It is such a close-knit area. This is dreadful." Holly Wells & Jessica Chapman Murders Murdered schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, flanked by pictures of the British Home Office �Rent a Mob�, hired explicitly to terrify suspect Maxine Carr outside Peterborough Crown Court in England When British police arrested Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr on suspicion of the abduction and murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, they did so in the certain knowledge that absolutely no hard evidence existed incriminating either suspect. The reason for the rapid arrests on 17 August 2002 at first appeared disarmingly simple. Just hours earlier, two small bodies had been found near the perimeter fence at USAF Lakenheath in Cambridgeshire, England, and the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street was terrified of a massive political scandal involving American servicemen transiting through the United Kingdom.

To gain an international perspective on this politically sensitive scenario, try imagining what would happen if two little Australian girls were abducted, brutalized, murdered and then found near the perimeter wire of the American base at Pine Gap in the Australian Northern Territory. Within the hour, sensing possible danger for their political masters over in Washington, Prime Minister John Howard and Attorney General Daryl Williams would probably order the Australian Federal Police to charge some poor retarded sap in Geelong or Girrawheen with the offence. No evidence needed - just enough political deception to shift the public gaze away from the American presence. This certainly appeared the most likely scenario when Huntley and Carr were first arrested in Cambridgeshire, but over the nine months that followed, it became increasingly obvious that this cover-up was a lot more than a hasty deflection for a perverted American with an unhealthy taste for underage English schoolgirls. Normally in a case like this, the false charges against Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr would have been dropped after about three months, with the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman remaining open for discreet inquiry at a more leisurely pace. Not this time.

Someone somewhere in a position of stratospheric political power wanted Huntley and Carr convicted of murder, jailed for life, and the case closed forever. And whoever this someone was, he demonstrated his very obvious ability to manipulate three British County Police Forces, The Metropolitan Police Service, the British Home Office in London, and the American Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington. Even at this early stage you must ask yourself who on earth is capable of wielding this colossal raw political power, and why he or they have chosen to do so in the [apparently] isolated case of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. A few weeks into the investigation, Cambridgeshire family liaison officer Detective Constable Brian Stevens appeared to uncover a new lead, and then the roof fell on his head and his career. At dawn on 12 September 2002, DC Brian Stevens was arrested on suspicion of child pornography offences, allegedly detected by the child pornography monitoring American �Operation Candyman�, run by the FBI with active CIA assistance. His actual arrest was manipulated by officials at The British Home Office in London, using the Metropolitan Police anti-pornography unit known as Operation Ore.

Anything Brian Stevens might claim after that date would be tainted with the very same �pedophile� tag he was trying to uncover. Think about this, people, think about it! One of the lowest ranking officers in one of the smallest British county police forces was deliberately silenced and discredited by the truly awesome combined power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the British Home Office and the Metropolitan police. But the false charges against Stevens would not stick, and were finally dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service [CPS] on 21 August 2003. However, this was not to be the end of Brian Steven�s persecution. On 12 September 2003 West Midlands police arrested him again, and today Detective Constable Brian Stevens stands accused of conspiring to pervert the course of justice. As always the devil lies in the detail, so in order to understand the level of deception surrounding this sickening pedophile crime and its stratospheric international implications, it is necessary to take a very long trip down memory lane, and follow every step of the fatally flawed investigation.

We need to cut through the complex web of government and media lies that led to two innocent young people being incarcerated in the most appalling of conditions, and to the destruction of a diligent British police officer�s career. Shortly after Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr were arrested, British and American media organizations demonized both so successfully that public attention was diverted away from the American base at Lakenheath where the bodies were actually found, and focused instead on the young couple from Soham who had earlier willingly spoken to television crews about their concerns for the well being of the two missing 10-year-old girls. Both knew the girls reasonably well. Ian Huntley was the caretaker at Soham secondary school, and Maxine Carr was a former teaching auxiliary in Holly and Jessica�s primary school class. Millions of viewers around the world watched Ian and Maxine being interviewed by the media, and most were impressed by the openness of their statements and their genuine willingness to help if possible. Experts in non-verbal communication also noticed that Ian and Maxine�s involuntary body and eye movements perfectly matched what they were saying verbally to the journalists.

Put another way, both Huntley and Carr appeared to be telling the truth both verbally and non-verbally, an almost impossible feat for even a trained liar to fabricate. It is critical to note here also that both came across on television as perfectly normal, sane individuals, a reality later to be inexplicably challenged by police and psychiatrists in Cambridgeshire. If Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr had been involved at all with the abduction and murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, would they have then been stupid enough to run the gauntlet of about 5,,000 American servicemen en-route, and dump the two small bodies in a location clearly visible from Lakenheath Control Tower, taxi track, and main runway? An American serviceman with detailed knowledge of activities and procedures inside the base might get away with it unseen, but certainly not two civilians from Soham in Cambridgeshire. So the perimeter would be an ideal dumping ground for an American eager to return to �safe� territory at USAF Lakenheath, before either entering their barracks on the base, or catching a shuttle bus to USAF Mildenhall.

In an attempt to demonize Ian Huntley still further, police �leaked� the damning information that he had been arrested for rape a number of years earlier. Well, yes, almost. While still a teenager Huntley had consensual sex with his girlfriend, who was only 15-years-old at the time, an offence in the United Kingdom known as statutory rape. He was never charged with an offence however, and his former girlfriend [now age 21 years] recently confirmed it was a mutual crush [love affair], with enthusiastic sexual consent on both sides. So for a while at least, police and media managed to deflect attention away from the two massive nearby USAF bases at Lakenheath and Mildenhall, and the political minefield lurking just below the surface if the British public ever find out about the very large numbers of children abused, raped, and sometimes murdered by American servicemen on overseas duty. So let us properly consider the �American Connection�, before returning later in this extended report to the unbelievable ongoing psychological abuse of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr.

Though earlier in the investigation police declared they would be interviewing �700 known sex offenders� of British nationality, there was no mention of interviewing the 5,000+ US servicemen based in close proximity to Soham Village, or determining which other American servicemen has transited through the two bases, and on which flights, since Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman first disappeared on 4 August 2002. The simple fact that Holly and Jessica�s bodies were found within yards of the USAF Lakenheath perimeter fence, which in turn provides access to the American barracks within, should have had British police knocking on Lakenheath�s front door immediately. Unfortunately, any such action might have accidentally undermined Prime Minister Tony Blair�s personal slavish dedication to George W Bush's �War on Terror.� Though most members of the American military are unquestionably nice people, the small number who are not, are invariably psychotic savages. It is a matter of public record that many American servicemen have habitually carried out sickening attacks against civilians while on overseas duty, happy in the knowledge that the serious assault or murder of women or girls in Japan, Kosovo or England, carries a lesser penalty than at home.

One such case is that of Staff Sergeant Frank Ronghi, who on 24 August 2000 pleaded guilty to sodomizing and killing an 11-year-old Kosovar girl in January the same year. A member of his platoon testified that Staff Sergeant Ronghi disdainfully claimed, �It�s easy to get away with this shit in a third-world country.� The �shit� Ronghi referred to is described here by the US Army Pathologist for Europe. "Her right jaw was fractured, practically bisected," said Lieutenant Colonel Kathleen Ingwersen, "We found evidence of sperm and semen in her vagina, mouth and rectum," she testified to a hushed hearing. "There was trauma to the neck muscles, the trachea and the carotid artery," Colonel Ingwersen said, adding she had found evidence of "blunt trauma" as the child was apparently beaten, choked and forced to kneel, face to the ground, as she was sodomized. But in a perverse way Ronghi was proved right about the overall American perception of the �lesser worth� of women and children, in what he and others continually refer to as the third world.

At his trial the Staff Sergeant was sentenced to life imprisonment, despite the fact that an identical offence against an American woman in the USA would have resulted in his execution. It would be impossible to list here all such vile attacks against �locals� by Americans overseas because there have been far too many. However, in order to educate the British police [who mercifully are rarely exposed to similar atrocities in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk] it seems prudent to mention a handful, thereby proving that Staff Sergeant Ronghi is far from being an isolated case. In 1955, an American soldier was sentenced to death for the murder of a six-year-old Okinawan girl, a sentence that was later commuted to life imprisonment. During 1966 a US soldier confessed to strangling a young waitress. Then in 1972, US soldiers were sentenced to life imprisonment for strangling local women. Later In 1975, a US soldier was sent to prison for raping two junior high school students. Local Okinawan police arrested two US soldiers during 1985 in the act of raping a woman.

During a spate of crimes in 1995, a US soldier was arrested for the hammering death of a young woman, two children were killed by a drunken soldier, and three US soldiers brutally raped a young schoolgirl. In January 2000 a US seaman was sentenced for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old Japanese girl. Remember this is only a small part of the overall list, nor does it include the many more alleged perpetrators who Japanese and other authorities claim were �spirited out of the country and back to the USA� before they could be apprehended and charged. The last point to consider before returning to the plight of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr, is the strange fate of four wives at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the former home base of Staff Sergeant Ronghi. All four wives were allegedly killed by their Sergeant husbands when they returned from active duty in Afghanistan, during the same week that Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman went missing. US Army authorities are currently trying to establish whether or not an anti-malarial drug all were taking contributed to the murders. The drug is acknowledged to have extra-pyramidal psychotic side-effects, and is prescribed to all US Servicemen in Afghanistan.

There are no direct flights out of Afghanistan to the USA, meaning that all American servicemen including those seriously affected by the drug, and also affected by PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) are obliged to change aircraft either in Germany or in England � normally at USAF Mildenhall. As a matter of urgency the British public should shame their local police into establishing accurately how many of these servicemen transited through USAF Mildenhall and USAF Lakenheath during the week that Holly and Jessica vanished. Initially on Saturday 17 August, Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr were arrested �on suspicion� of being involved in the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Each was taken to a different police station in Cambridgeshire for interrogation, which is standard police procedure. However, this is also the point at which standard police procedure vanished completely. Obviously Ian and Maxine were determined to protest their innocence, and refused to provide police with a convenient �confession�, no matter how tired they were, and no matter how much extreme pressure was applied by the big burly threatening policemen. There was also a marked absence of defence lawyers making statements on behalf of the suspects.

In an extraordinary move, police then applied to a �Closed Court� for an extension of Huntley and Carr�s detention, though the reasons were not made public. There was actually no need for police to provide us with a reason, because it was blatantly obvious they still had absolutely nothing to connect the two suspects with the two murders. If at that stage police had any hard evidence linking Ian Huntley or Maxine Carr to the murders, or had managed to coerce a confession out of either, they would have been charged immediately. Then on Tuesday 20 August, just twenty-four hours before the legally extended detention was due to expire at 6.19 am on Wednesday, a complete team of psychiatrists appeared as if by magic, and deemed that Ian Huntley was unfit to appear in court. He was then �sectioned� under the Mental Health Act 1983 and remanded to Rampton high-security psychiatric hospital, at Retford in North Nottinghamshire, without being charged with any offence. Now think about this carefully. When we all saw Ian Huntley on international television he was entirely coherent and unquestionably sane.

But apparently, after a mere three days in police custody, he suddenly became insane to the point where he needed to be �sectioned�. How? Did police deprive him of sleep and induce a [predictable and natural] nervous breakdown, or are the all-too-convenient government psychiatrists a pack of liars? You choose� One thing is certain. Ian Huntley�s legal and human rights have been grossly violated on international television, and we have done absolutely nothing about it. Ask yourself: Is it even legal to section a man in England under the Mental Health Act before he is charged? When asked this precise question, Dr Harris of Rampton Psychiatric Hospital was evasive, replying, "It is not unheard of, but it is very unusual." Once inside the terrifying Rampton building, a Victorian hulk originally founded as an asylum in 1912 under the Criminal Lunatics Act of 1860, police charged Ian Huntley with murder. He was then at mercy of a five-man psychiatric team tasked with assessing his �symptoms� night and day over a one-month period, and no doubt shoveling noxious psychoactive medications down his throat.

This was the Gulag Archipelago all over again, and Joe Stalin would have loved it. The next problem for police was Maxine Carr. Clearly no one would believe that two people had suddenly gone completely insane in police custody at the same time, so officials at the Home Office had to think of something a little more creative. They knew Huntley and Carr were both were innocent of course, but somehow Maxine had to be brought under control. In other words Maxine Carr had to be so badly frightened that she would be positively eager to �cooperate� with police when the drugged, perhaps electro-shocked and certainly docile Ian Huntley was finally paraded in front of the courts. So police formally charged Maxine Carr with �attempting to pervert the course of justice�, i.e. lying to police whether she had or not, and quietly arranged to have her incarcerated in the most brutal and terrifying of Britain�s womens� prisons, at Holloway in London. �Attempting to pervert� is not a violent crime requiring a high security establishment of course, and there were certainly prisons closer to Soham, but only Holloway would have the desired devastating effect on Maxine, hopefully bringing her under immediate control.

Although the Victorian Holloway was replaced in a phased rebuilding programme between 1975 and 1985, it has managed to retain its brutal reputation. In 1995 Sir David Ramsbotham, then inspector of prisons, walked out in disgust at the conditions he found inside. He noted that 75% of women at the jail were suffering from some form of identifiable mental disorder, while one in 10 was suicidal. Almost half were drug addicts in need of immediate detoxification, while more than half had serious alcohol problems and nearly 95% were on sleeping pills. Naturally enough, on its own this would be quite enough to send a quiet country girl like Maxine insane in weeks, but the British authorities wanted to make absolutely sure. So before she left for London, police arranged a court hearing for her in the local town of Peterborough, and made sure the media and �rent a mob� people knew about its exact timing well in advance. As the police van approached the court, the commotion started for the innocent woman not yet convicted of any offence at all.

Unseen hands banged on the metal van, and several females led an ugly chorus, jeering and shouting at a woman they could not see - a thick grey blanket had been placed over Maxine Carr's head - for a double murder with which she has not even been charged. "Evil bitch", screamed one. "Sick cow," spat another. In the melee, a woman and her two daughters unfurled a home-made banner. "Rot in hell forever", it said. Trial by television media had well and truly started, and the trembling Maxine Carr had not yet even reached that special part of hell called Holloway. But a week or two in there with the deranged and the druggies should have her �cooperating� with anything and everything the Cambridgeshire Police Service wants. But is that really the point here? The Chief Constable and all of his officers at Cambridgeshire Constabulary should be mortally ashamed of their blatant abuse of police powers, abuse of the judicial process, and abuse of the Mental Health Act.

In turn it goes almost without saying that we the public should not believe a word of any subsequent �confession� that Maxine Carr is coerced into making, during or after her terrifying ordeal at Holloway. Nor should we necessarily believe that the little Cambridgeshire Constabulary [1,307 proud officers and still recruiting] had the overall power to pull off these impressive stunts without some very heavy political assistance. Think about it carefully. The original players in a tight little Cambridgeshire county investigation have been scattered to the four winds. Ian Huntley was relocated 100 miles away to the north in Rampton, Nottinghamshire, and Maxine Carr 100 miles away to the south in Holloway, London. The bodies of the girls were actually found in Suffolk, directly involving a third force, the Suffolk Constabulary. And oh, yes, police investigators from the Norfolk Constabulary did quite a lot of the legwork on direct orders from the Home Office. So the Cambridgeshire Holly and Jessica Case, is not really the Cambridgeshire Holly and Jessica case at all, is it?

The only people who know exactly what is going on in London, Nottinghamshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire is the small group of powerful manipulators who set the scene. This is the same small group who demonstrated sufficient awesome central power to arrange special closed courts, send a truckload of wobbly shrinks to Cambridgeshire, subvert the Mental Health Act, and personally arrange the twin hells of Rampton and Holloway for suspects Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr. Believe me, only the most senior of bureaucrats at the Home Office in London have sufficient raw power to arrange all of this. There is another point to consider about the case itself. A newspaper report states �The bodies of murdered 10-year-old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were discovered in a �severely decomposed and partially skeletonised� state, and the pair were almost certainly not killed where they were discovered, a coroner�s inquest was told yesterday. Their remains were found last Saturday in woodlands outside a United States air base at Lakenheath, Suffolk.� Even now, the cause or place of death cannot be established, and the Coroner has released the bodies to the parents for burial.

The reason for the importance of this statement will be obvious to residents in the Lakenheath area, whose local newspapers saturated them for weeks with the information that Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr once lived years ago in a house owned by relatives less than a half-mile away from where the bodies were found. So this information allowing police to �point the finger� at the pair has long been in the public domain, and would be of enormous value to anyone wishing to deflect attention away from the real killers. Adding real substance to this claim is the fact that the path beside which the bodies were located is well used by walkers, but the bodies were not �found� until the very morning of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr�s arrests. Now ask yourself what you would do if you were Ian Huntley and had really been involved in the murder of the two little girls. Would you deliberately move their bodies close to a residence that you had lived in some years before, thereby tacitly pointing the finger of guilt at yourself, or would you move the bodies well away from any such residence? You choose, though even a deranged person in Holloway should be able to select the correct answer to this elementary question.

Taking the opposite view, what would you do if you were a deranged American serviceman or politician who managed to smuggle the two little girls inside USAF Lakenheath, and then murdered them at some remote location inside the very large airfield boundary, with its multitude of convenient empty buildings? Would you leave the bodies where they lay until the smell of putrefaction attracted the attention of the Military Police at the base, or would you toss the pathetic remains over the perimeter fence one dark night, as close as possible to the former Huntley residence you learned about in the local Suffolk newspaper, and then tip off police? Once again, you choose. No matter what you choose and no matter what you think, it will probably make no difference to the final outcome. The atmosphere surrounding this case is so heavily laden with political fog that you could cut it with a knife. At the national level you cannot afford to rock the boat because of Tony Blair�s �special relationship� with the White House, and all this entails for his personal prestige and the �War on Terror�.

That said, Tony Blair�s wife Cherie is apparently a leading human rights lawyer, who might decide to take independent personal action where this gross abuse of human rights in her own back yard is concerned. At the county level you cannot rock the boat because, as the Chamber of Commerce will eagerly explain, those thousands of nice American servicemen at USAF Lakenheath and USAF Mildenhall spend millions of pounds each year with local businesses in Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. You remember the people at the Chamber of Commerce don't you? English Masons, Rotarians, Buffs and the rest, cheerfully guzzling free Budweiser Beer at the Lakenheath Officer's Club, while looking down their noses at the American Base Commander. If you live in America, Australia or Britain and really care about legal and human rights for everyone including Ian Huntley, Maxine Carr, your own children and yourself, there is probably only one thing you can do: Call or fax the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Constabulary, expressing your disgust at the actions of his officers where this matter is concerned, and seeking his personal assurance that the illegal and immoral psychological assault on Huntley and Carr will be discontinued immediately.

Though it may seem pointless phoning or writing to a Chief Constable who is visibly not in charge of his own investigation, he is nonetheless the only visible "front end" who can be directly and officially approached on the matter. If you keep pressing the right buttons often enough, you can and will make a difference. More than a decade ago matters were seriously mismanaged in a case involving this writer, and I took exactly this action. The last time I bothered to check, I still held the record for receiving three written apologies in a single week regarding the same mismanaged case: The first was from the Home Office, the second from Special Branch, and the third from the Chief Constable of Suffolk Constabulary. If I can make a difference, so can you. Write or call the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Constabulary, Tel: 01480 456111, Fax: 01480 412848.

Ian Huntley�s trial was supposed to start on 6 October 2003 at the Old Bailey in London, but has been delayed until 3 November on the orders of trial judge Mr Justice Moses, who also ordered that his reasons for delaying the trial must not be revealed to the public at large! Poor Ian Huntley seems to have drawn the short straw where judges are concerned. Justice Moses is a veritable pillar of the political establishment, who in 1998 suppressed the name of Home Secretary Jack Straw [The political head of the Home Office] in a case involving cannabis, then in 2001 ruled that MI5 defector David Shayler did not have the right to mount a public interest defence to charges of revealing state secrets. Whether or not Justice Moses will delay still further we do not know, because I am legally prohibited from revealing his inconsequential reasons for stalling the trial until 6 November. All else being equal, and provided that Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr manage to stay alive for the next few weeks, both must be allowed their day in court before a jury of 12 of their peers, who will hopefully not be �nobbled� in advance by the Home Office.

By a curious �coincidence� Detective Constable Brian Steven�s provisional trial date is set for about 10 days later, which should provide a very useful smoke screen for the pedophiles in very high places who are continuing to cover-up for those who first sexually abused and then murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Only time will tell if we can ever uncover the true villains Part Two of this report will start when Ian Huntley is dragged up from the Old Bailey holding cells and placed in the dock, and will continue to be updated thereafter, until the trial and abuse of Ian Huntley, Maxine Carr, and Detective Constable Brian Stevens is finally over. We owe it to these people to generate as much publicity as possible, in an attempt to expose the blatantly obvious pedophiles in very high places. BBC NEWS | UK | Huntley guilty of Soham murders Huntley guilty of Soham murders Huntley murdered 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman Ian Huntley has been found guilty of the murders of Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman and given two life sentences.

As the verdicts came in, it emerged Huntley, 29, had been accused of having sex with underage girls and of rape several times in the past. Amid criticism of the vetting procedure that allowed Huntley to get a job as a school caretaker, Home Secretary David Blunkett ordered an inquiry. Maxine Carr, 26, was given three-and-a-half years for conspiring to pervert the course of justice but cleared of two counts of assisting an offender. She could be free and electronically tagged within 30 days, because she has already spent 16 months in jail. Huntley was taken to Belmarsh Prison in south-east London after sentencing. Jessica's father, Leslie Chapman, described Huntley as a "timebomb just ready to go off", adding, "unfortunately our girls were in the wrong place at the wrong time". 'Few worse crimes' Sentencing Huntley, Mr Justice Moses said he had displayed "merciless cynicism" after killing the 10-year-old best friends. The next time I'd like to see him was how we last saw our daughters and that was in a coffin Leslie Chapman The judge said: "You murdered them both.

You are the one person who knows how you murdered them, you are the one person who knows why." He said: "There are few worse crimes than your murder of those two young girls". Huntley was told he added to the families' grief by pretending to help search for the "much loved" 10-year-olds and by offering words of sympathy to Holly's father. 'Wrong place' Later at a press conference, Mr Chapman said of Huntley: "The next time I'd like to see him was how we last saw our daughters and that was in a coffin." He said he hoped Huntley would one day have "the guts" to publicly explain what happened on the night the girls died. Kevin Wells, father of Holly, said he hoped the Home Office inquiry would ensure "no other families have to endure what we have over the past 16 months". PREVIOUS ALLEGATIONS AGAINST IAN HUNTLEY One of indecent assault Full list of allegations Prime Minister Tony Blair praised both sets of parents for their "tremendous dignity". Det Chief Supt Chris Stevenson, who led the search for the girls, said Huntley was a "calculating and callous child killer".

He said only Huntley knew why he had killed Holly and Jessica, adding: "Perhaps one day he might demonstrate a sliver of humanity and explain why he did what he did on that terrible day last August." The chief constable of Humberside Police admitted that the force made several mistakes before clearing Ian Huntley to work with children in Soham. It is now known that North East Lincolnshire Social Services had received four complaints of underage sexual relations against Huntley in the late 1990s. They said none of the victims wanted to make a formal complaint, so there was nothing they could do against him. On Wednesday, the council's chief executive Jim Leivers said he welcomed the verdicts and that the council's thoughts were with the parents and families of the murdered girls. Humberside Police said he was reported to them eight times by alleged victims, and he was also arrested once for failure to appear at court. There were also three allegations of rape against Huntley. One investigation resulted in a charge, in May 1998, but the case never came to court as the CPS was not hopeful of a conviction and dropped the case. Police operation Holly and Jessica vanished from Soham on 4 August 2002.

Their bodies were found in a ditch on 17 August, after one of the biggest police operations the UK has ever seen. As the jury returned two 11 to 1 majority verdicts on Huntley, the Wells family hugged each other and sobbed. A hushed "yes" resounded around the courtroom but Huntley showed no emotion. The jury also returned a majority 11 to 1 verdict on Carr's lesser charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice. Sexual motivation Huntley had admitted Holly and Jessica had died at his home and he dumped their bodies, but claimed it was an accident. Profile: Maxine Carr In court, Huntley said Holly died after falling into his bath, and he killed Jessica by putting his hand over her mouth to stop her screaming. But the prosecution laid out an alternative version of events - that Huntley lured Holly and Jessica into his house, possibly with a sexual motivation, and murdered them when his plan went wrong. It said he then coldly went about destroying the evidence and trying to hide his involvement to police, press and local residents.

Rugby player Carr admitted to the court that she had lied to police to provide an alibi for her boyfriend on the weekend the girls disappeared. She had claimed to be with him in Soham, but in fact had been in Grimsby with a 17-year-old rugby player with whom she was having an affair. She denied she even suspected Huntley had been involved in the girls' deaths, and was only trying to protect him from being wrongly accused. Carr is also alleged to have spent years colluding with Huntley in a benefits scam for which she was about to be charged, but instead was arrested for her involvement in the Soham case. Her lawyer Roy James said she was relieved that "the jury had now recognised that she had no idea that Huntley had murdered Holly and Jessica". 'Watershed' The vicar of Soham, Rev Tim Alban Jones, was among community leaders who said the town would be relieved that a verdict had been reached. "If it's difficult for the people of Soham it's been far more difficult for the families of Holly and Jessica. This will perhaps be something of a watershed," he said.

When told about Huntley's past contact with the police and social services, Rev Alban Jones said had that been known he would not have been employed at the school. BBC ON THIS DAY | 17 | 2003: Ian Huntley guilty of Soham murders About This Site | Text Only 2003: Ian Huntley guilty of Soham murders Former school caretaker Ian Huntley has been found guilty of the murder of Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Huntley was given two life sentences. The two ten-year-old girls, who were best friends, vanished from a family barbecue at Holly's house in Soham, Cambridgeshire, on 4 August 2002. Their bodies were found in a ditch nearly two weeks later after one of the biggest police operations the UK has ever seen. As the verdicts came in, it emerged Huntley, 29, has been accused of having sex with underage girls and of rape several times in the past.

His girlfriend, Maxine Carr, 26, was sentenced to three and a half years in jail for conspiring to pervert the course of justice by giving a false alibi to police for Huntley on the day of the murder. She was cleared of two counts of assisting an offender. Carr has already spent 16 months in prison and is likely to be freed with an electronic tag in a few months' time. 'Merciless cynicism' Sentencing Huntley, Mr Justice Moses said he had displayed "merciless cynicism" after killing the 10-year-old girls. The judge said: "You murdered them both. You are the one person who knows how you murdered them, you are the one person who knows why." He also told Huntley that he had added to the families' grief by pretending to help search for the girls and by offering words of sympathy to Holly's father. No emotion As the jury returned 11 to 1 majority verdicts on Huntley, the Wells family hugged each other and sobbed. Huntley showed no emotion.

Police database to hit 1m searches 10 years after Soham - BBC News BBC News Police database to hit 1m searches 10 years after Soham By Katy Prickett BBC News, Cambridgeshire 15 August 2012 Close share panel Image caption Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells were murdered at Huntley's home It is 10 years since the bodies of murdered schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were found buried in a shallow grave near a Suffolk airbase. Their deaths at the hands of Ian Huntley sparked a major investigation after it emerged the school caretaker had previously faced allegations of rape and under-age sex. Now, ahead of Friday's 10th anniversary of the girls' bodies being found, one of the key recommendations of the Bichard Inquiry that followed the double murder is approaching a major landmark. The Police National Database (PND), set up last year to ensure convicts and suspects could not hide across county borders, is set to hit one million searches. The disappearance of the 10-year-old girls from their home town of Soham, in Cambridgeshire, prompted one of Britain's biggest police investigations and saw Huntley jailed for life in 2003.

Sir Michael Bichard, who oversaw a 200-page report into police and vetting procedures, found "deeply shocking" failures. Timeline of the Soham murders 4 August 2002: Holly and Jessica are reported missing. 5 August 2002: Volunteers and police begin a major search. 17 August 2002: Ian Huntley, 28, and girlfriend Maxine Carr, 25, are arrested on suspicion of murder. 18 August 2002: Acting Deputy Chief Constable Keith Hoddy says police are as certain as they can be that the bodies are those of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. 20 August 2002: School caretaker Huntley is charged with the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. 17 December 2003: Huntley is found guilty of the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Carr is found guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice. The creation of the database was described by the parents of Holly and Jessica as a "defining moment" to mark the passing of their daughters.

Sharon and Les Chapman, Jessica's parents, said: "We hope [the database's] use will mean other families don't suffer the same loss and heartbreak as we did." Since being set up, the database has helped to identify potential leads in a double murder inquiry, helped police trace a missing registered sex offender and provided information on a domestic violence offender which helped officers identify a second victim. Collectively, police forces hold information on between 10 and 15 million people. These include convicted criminals, suspects and victims of crime, as well as the details of people who have been questioned by police but not charged. 'Leap forward' The database combines intelligences from all 43 forces in England and Wales, bringing together 150 computer systems. By Tuesday, the number of searches carried out by police forces using the database had reached 975,000, the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) said. Image caption A national police database was recommended after police failings in the Ian Huntley case The NPIA says the current rate of inquiries means it is likely to hit the one million mark by Friday - exactly 10 years on from the discovery of the girls' bodies.

Chief Constable Nick Gargan, chief executive of the NPIA, said: "When we rolled out the database, for the first time the British police service could link up intelligence that was held on individual systems in individual forces. "It could be accessed directly by colleagues in other forces and was a major leap forward." Consultant forensic psychologist Dr Ian Stephen said the database would help criminal profilers. "Huntley's past would fit into the profile of a killer who commits crimes which gradually escalate in terms of seriousness," he said. It's very much a time for the families The Rev Tim Alban Jones "The problem was his past was not known by detectives. "With better sharing of information it will hopefully become easier for investigators to identify individuals who fit psychological profiles." Soham Village College caretaker Huntley was given a double life sentence after being found guilty at the Old Bailey in December 2003. His girlfriend Maxine Carr was also jailed for three-and-a-half years after being convicted of perverting the course of justice for giving Huntley a false alibi. She was given a new identity following her release from prison. Holly and Jessica, both aged 10, were found in Mildenhall, nearly two weeks after they went missing.

They were murdered at Huntley's home in Soham. The Reverend Tim Alban Jones, of St Andrew's Church, in Soham, said the church did not plan to mark the 10th anniversary of the grim discovery. "It is very much a time for the families," he said.

Question: The bodies of murdered schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman from Soham were discovered in which year?
Answer: 2002